My first character was a “muppet-born” named Ché-Elmo, who interacted with the group over video chat directly (a hand-puppet Elmo with a red star cap was all they saw and heard), and was a Warlock who had made a pact with the being Carl Marx in exchange for power. His tome of power was Das Kapital, which I’d have him leaf through while we played.

He went missing a few years ago; it’s my belief that he’s out there now in some other dimension still sticking it to every merchant he encounters.

This, perhaps?

“Woman are you going to be able to get the kids”

Lmao this is not how I talk, nor do I have an SO nor kids. Though maybe that’s for the best going by autocomplete

The good news: I don’t drive anymore

The bad news: I did that shit because I grew up on an intersection with a real bad angle, so the only way to see both directions was to angle the car flat with the road I was turning onto. Then, even after moving, I did it because it gives better visibility.

“update doc to reflect reality still more”

A negative income tax system has the same incentive as our current bracketed tax system to earn more money: for every dollar you earn, even if a higher percentage gets taken out on that next dollar, you still have more money now.

It just shifts our brackets down so that you get “negatively taxed” - given money - for the lowest brackets of income. But a person making $100k would still be given say $15k for the first $10k of their income, $5k for next $10k, taxed at 9% for the next $10k, 20% the following $10k, so on and so forth - so that every dollar they make still means more money in their pocket, it’s just a percentage less for the additional dollars as they move brackets. Considering that’s already how it works, it seems no incentive changes would arise for high earners.

This is the “Negative Income Tax”, popularized by famously conservative Federal Reserve chair Milton Friedman as the approach to community support that best meshed with supply/demand.

take the Globular Condor or whatever the Westbound train is called to Altoona"

Lol, it’s the Pennsylvania 43, I’ve been taking it a lot recently - but their site may have been upgraded since you last tried it, because they told me basically that exact thing in reverse for how to get to Jacksonville from Pittsburgh when I was poking at it last week, so it might be worth giving it a go again if it’d be helpful.

Edit: lmao, I gave it a go, and nope, it says “we do not have any travel options.” Taking a look, I’d bet it’s because the Pennsylvania 43 leaves at 11AM, and the Silver Star arrives at 7:10PM, so maybe it has rules requiring same-day departure between arrivals to be consider “the same trip”? The Pittsburgh->Jax route has much shorter connections. Also you could connect in Philly if you’d like, if I’m tracking the Silver Star’s path correctly - the 43 goes NY->Philly->Altoona

Edit 2: yeah, it seems like it just doesn’t consider taking the Silver Star to the Pennsylvanian as an option when going to West PA from SC - like, even getting to Pittsburgh the only option it gives is heading to Washington DC then using the Capitol Limited from DC - which is completely reasonable, but means missing out on the extra stations you get with the Pennsylvania 43 like Altoona. I wonder if these routes between places are hand-written?